A push for huge government energy

• President Trump’s declare on Monday that he has “the absolute right” to pardon himself for any crime was the most recent in a sequence of strikes asserting his management over federal regulation enforcement. No president has ever pardoned himself, and it’s unclear if Mr. Trump may legitimately achieve this.

The concept that presidents, by advantage of their distinctive constitutional powers, are above the regulation has surfaced earlier than. Richard Nixon famously claimed after Watergate, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” But assertions by Mr. Trump’s group that obstruction-of-justice statutes don’t apply to him carry new twists. Read more from one of our Washington correspondents.

Also on Monday, prosecutors accused Mr. Trump’s former marketing campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, of trying to tamper with witnesses in his tax and cash laundering case. The prosecutors, who work for the particular counsel, Robert Mueller, referred to as for Mr. Manafort’s bail to be revoked or revised.

• For almost a yr, Mr. Trump’s aides denied that the president had been behind a deceptive assertion, launched in his son’s title, a few assembly at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected lawyer. But in a confidential memo to the particular counsel, Mr. Trump’s legal professionals acknowledged that the president had, in fact, dictated the statement.